This Year’s Most-Loved French Bestsellers in English

The French love to read; the average français reads more than a book a month. But what do they read? Is it all Proust and Flaubert, or are there some page turners in there? If you’d like to read as the French do, you’re in luck, because many of their recent best-sellers are now available in English.

Here is a selection of recent best-sellers in France that you can read in English. 

Serious Novels 

Mona’s Eyes, by Thomas Schlesser, has been a huge best seller, first in France and then, after being translated into more than 30 languages, across the world. It tells the story of ten-year-old Mona, who is at risk of losing her eyesight in a year. Her grandfather may not be able to stop the girl’s blindness, but is determined to fill the encroaching darkness with beauty. So, taking a very French approach, they visit a single masterpiece in one of Paris’s renowned museums every week for a year. From Botticelli to Basquiat, Mona learns how each artist’s work shaped the world around them. In turn, the young girl’s world is changed forever by the power of art.  

Watching Over Her by Jean-Baptiste Andrea is a winner of the Prix Goncourt, France’s top literary award. It tells of the lifelong friendship of Mimo, a sculptor with immense talent who happens to be a dwarf, and Viola, a rich girl with a photographic memory who dreams of becoming an emancipated woman. This being a French novel, it does not have a happy ending. The story is recounted by Mimo on his deathbed in a remote monastery. He has lived there for decades while monks guard his masterpiece, hidden there by the Church because of its strange power over all who see it. 

Page Turners 

What is a French marriage really like? In this darkly funny novel, My Husband, a woman with an enviable life obsesses over making everything perfect for her husband. She is madly in love with him and worries that her feelings are not reciprocated. So, she begins creating little tests, judging his reaction to each, but one day she goes too far. It’s been called “an unnerving take on the relationship-suspense genre” where not everything is as it seems. 

Guillaume Musso has been one of France’s best-selling authors for years. In Angélique, a Parisian policeman meets a mysterious woman who asks him to investigate the death of her mother. The mother, a former ballerina at the Paris Ballet Opera, died the previous year in an accident. She had fallen from a balcony…or was she pushed? The investigation leads to a deadly chain of events with Angélique at their centre, a woman whose angelic intentions may not be what they seem. 

Joël Dicker is the rare writer who has won the grand prize in literature from the French Academy….for a thriller. He has been called “the master of the plot twist” and his latest best-seller shows why. Wild Animal tells the story of a wealthy couple whose perfect life along the shores of Lake Geneva is about to crumble. A gift is received from a mysterious prowler, a jewel heist goes wrong, and dark secrets are revealed. 

The French call the post-war period from 1945 to 1975 Les trentes glorieuses (The 30 Glorious years), which was a period of almost non-stop economic growth. But it was not without its problems. Pierre Lemaitre explores this era in a four-book series that begins with The Wide World, the story of the wealthy Pelletier family and its worldwide business. Shifting between Paris, Beirut and Saigon, The Wide World has been called “a novel of passion, greed, murder, and revenge.” Lemaitre was one of France’s top thriller writers before shifting to serious literature, but he has lost none of his capacity to keep you on the edge of your seat. 

Historical Fiction 

Based on a shameful episode in French history, The Mad Women’s Ball tells the story of Paris’s Salpêtrière asylum in the 1880s. It housed women who were deemed mad but were more often simply inconvenient, like unwanted wives and wayward daughters. These poor women were put on display once a year in the “Mad Women’s Ball,” where they were dolled up and presented to Parisian society. The book tells the story of Eugenie, a troublesome daughter who has been locked away but plots an escape… 

Non-Fiction 

Winner of the Prix Goncourt, Live Fast by Brigitte Giraud is a quick read at 176 pages, but there is a lot in those pages. The book is an autobiographical account of the fatal accident that took the life of Brigitte’s husband decades years earlier. Each of the short chapters asks, “what if?” recounting the small twists of fate that might have prevented the accident. The book takes the reader back through the couple’s past, painting a picture of life in Lyon in the 1980s, and is a sensitive elegy to lasting love. 

Sad Tiger by Neige Sinno was a “literary phenomenon” in France and has won numerous prizes around the world. It tells the true story of the sexual abuse the author suffered at the hands of her stepfather throughout her childhood. At the age of 19, she broke the silence so often imposed around sexual violence in France, resulting in prison for her abuser. Sinno’s book is “a literary exploration of how to speak about the unspeakable” and a call to protect others from what she endured.  

Giuliano da Empoli is a professor of political science in Paris, which makes his appearance as a best-selling author something of a surprise. His first book, The Wizard of the Kremlin, was a novel which told the story of Putin’s rise and won the grand prize in literature from the French Academy. His new book, The Hour of the Predator, is non-fiction and even more chilling. It describes how traditional government institutions in France and around the world find themselves increasingly outmatched by tech tycoons and autocratic regimes. It’s been called “the one book you absolutely need to read to understand current politics.” 

Graphic Novels 

No French best-seller list would be complete without the beloved Asterix, a French institution for more than 60 years. He and his friends live in the only corner of Gaul (France) that has resisted Roman rule. In this latest adventure, Asterix and the White Iris, the Romans introduce “positive thinking” to the Gaulois as a way to soften them up before a possible takeover. Fortunately, our heroes Asterix and Obelix find a way to foil their plot.